


The Complexion of the Sky

by Gileonnen



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Astrology, Astronomy, Gen, Imaginary Worlds, Slow Starvation, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard II reads the new king's future in the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Complexion of the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/gifts).



The window of his cell is too high to show the winter grounds of Pomfret; he couldn't reach the bars, even were he to stand on his toes and stretch his arms until the muscles ache, and in any case he has grown too weak to draw himself up to the ledge and peer over. The light slants through in the afternoon, though, describing a slow arc over the ill-strawed floor, and the cold seeps in with it. On dark nights, he huddles with a cup of thin broth -- water with a bare bone boiled in it, he thinks, no thin skin of fat at the top to suggest that there was ever anything like meat -- and he watches the progress of the stars.

The keeper tastes his food for him, but Richard tastes it not at all.

He could make a calendar of omens, he thinks, were he to track the planets in their rounds. The red gleam of Mars foretells impending war; that brief-flashing meteor imports a rival's rise. The moon, which shone bloody on Richard's Irish campaigns, now gleams bone-white on the first days of Henry IV's reign. "His is a regnal broth of boiled bones," mutters Richard into the fast-dissipating steam, but nonetheless, the bowl warms his hands.

In the transit of Mercury, he reads his cousin's impending death. So it is written, and so it shall be -- if not because the stars decree, then because Richard has seen the rash that mottles Henry's neck in patterns like scales. He will die in a sickbed, wasted and beset by rebellions, and none will comfort him.

Richard finishes his broth and rises, striding to the very end of his chain and pressing himself against the cold wall. He stretches up onto the balls of his feet, onto his toes; he stretches until every part of him is bowstring-taut, and then he extends his hands over his head to touch the stone beneath the bars of his window.

There is no window, of course, but he has imagined it perfectly enough that he feels a species of despair when his hands touch only stone.

He seats himself again on the thin straw, looking up at the unbroken wall where his window would be. Venus is in transit through Virgo; it means an unrequited love. "I'll speak him prophecy," whispers Richard, as a new spate of shivering seizes and shakes him. He can scarcely get the words out through his chattering teeth. "I'll read his stars --"

Behind his eyes, the constellations wheel bright and proximate as candle-flames, and in them the coming days are written clear.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Complexion of the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5597956) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




End file.
